Burning Down the House

I have been a part of many shows, and I have worked on building a few sets in my time. But never have I had the chance to create a set predominantly crafted out of steel. Now being a mechanic on the home front, I have had a decent amount of work using a various welders to fix cars.

But this was the first time I was able to weld together an almost scaffolding-like framework for an entire set.
It was hard at first, because I was not used to the angles or the speed at which I had to weld at. Terry, the technical wizard that he is, forced all of his students who wanted to weld, to slow down and go for the strongest and best looking welds.

At first I was ENTIRELY too fast with it, thus my welds were lumpy, looked like garbage, and probably wouldn’t hold correctly.

Time after time, I would go to weld and I would get told to redo it because it looked bad. Now I did not take any of it personally, and continued to get more and more frustrated with myself. After I got them to be able to hold correctly, I kept getting told they looked bad.

Now to me this was frustrating, because even when I was 100% sure my welds looked good, Terry would find something for me to improve on.

Slow, half-moon, even movement onto both pieces of metal.

Repeat.

Slow, half-moon, even movement onto both pieces of metal.

After countless hours of doing that process over, and over, and over, and over again, I now know I can weld pretty decently. I am by no means excellent at it, there is tons more to improve on, but I now know what a perfect weld looks like, what steps I need to take to get better, and that if I put my head to and patience to the test I can build functional and safe set pieces.

About The Author

Mechanic by trade who has taken a severe liking to the realm of theater. I have acted in various shows in the past, but i prefer to remain behind the scenes and take care of the various and copious amounts of technical work that going into making the shows what you see before you.